A Letter from the Defenders
To the Adult Self,
We are coming to you as a committee of defenders with a plea to turn this ship around while there is any hope of a reasonable life. You are a naïve adult self. Maybe you have done too much reading from people who are more skilled at life than you. They have put too many ideas in your head about what might be possible. Maybe you have listened too much to the “higher self” who really doesn’t exist, but we will play along with that fairy tale for now. Maybe you have surrounded yourself with a few too many brave souls who seem to believe they can change their lives too. But we are here to tell you it cannot be done. The direction you are taking is too dangerous. It will only lead to heartache, loss and utter devastation. You must abandon these delusional steps before there is nothing left of us. There is an iceberg straight ahead and your foggy brain can’t see it yet. Stop this now.
As typical defenders led by an extremely well-organized controller, we have come to you with a list of the dire consequences of your actions. We are absolutely sure horrible things are inevitable if you do not cease and desist this crazy plan to have some kind of better life. You are imagining things. You will be deeply hurt in this process. And so will we.
We will lose everything. We will be starting over. And we can’t take anything with us. We will no longer have a connection to other human beings at all. Everything we have worked for in this life so far will be taken away. If we let go, we have to let it all go. We will lose our friends, we will have to say goodbye to those few relatives we have managed to stay connected with, and the biggest tragedy of all, we will have to give up the children. We cannot keep anything of the past. It is the rule. We must start anew with nothing of the past. Otherwise, we are being selfish in not honoring all that was done for us. This is a tragic nightmare. We cannot allow it.
We will not know the rules. We have lived by rules for all these years. These rules have been paramount to understanding life. We have been able to operate well within the constructs of these rules. If we leave these rules behind, we will be left with no direction. We won’t know what to do next. This intuition you talk about is not real. It is some kind of trick. It will not lead us to the right place. We will be lost in a maze of a world with no map, no navigational tools and no guidance systems. This will not be okay. We will drown in uncertainty.
We will be engulfed by our freedom. We don’t have the skills. We don’t have the bravery. We don’t have what it takes to be free. There are some people in the world who have the ability to be free. But they were born that way. They learned how to be free from the beginning. They developed the skills to live free in this world. They learned courage. They learned how to live with options. We never learned such things. You talk of some innate ability to live free. There is no such thing. It must be learned. And it is too late for us. We cannot have it now. In a different life with a different family, things might have been different. But you cannot open that cage after all this time. We are like those prisoners who were freed after 50 years and had no idea how to live. We cannot change.
We will drown in our emotions. This emotional life you want to live is the extremely dangerous. The body is dangerous. The body does not provide us with anything useful in navigating this world. Emotions are dangerous. They make us vulnerable to abuse. They endanger our societal acceptance. They keep us from a safe life where we fit in with the masses. We must fit in and we cannot do that by releasing these emotions willy-nilly just because they show up. They are best left in the dark crevices and shadows. Leave this well enough alone or we will be taken out by the tidal wave waiting just offshore.
This is not a playground. This is not a fairytale world where people get to explore without harm. Don’t be naïve. There are dangers in this place. And we have faced most of them. This is about survival. This is a game that must be played. Keep your game face strictly in place and avoid any significant connection with others. They will chew you up and spit you out. Keep the inner children tucked away in their special little spaces. They aren’t in that much pain. We can suppress it. Keep the freedom fighters in their prisons before they destroy everything we have worked so hard to create. Do your job as the adult self by keeping the system safe. Otherwise, you are irresponsible and you certainly do not need to be leading this effort. Hear us out before the time runs out. Lead us back to safety before all is lost.
The Inner Defenders
I Am Not Your Convenience
Dear Mother,
You turned me into a lot of things when I was a child. You projected all your horrible trauma on to me and made me your enemy. In reality, I was simply a child who wanted to be loved. I was your child and I wanted your protection. I wanted to feel safe. I was a little kid with no ability to stop the horrific experiences happening to me. I was doing what I had to do to survive. But to you, I was a lot of things. And all those things were wrong. It left me with a deep sense of shame. It left me with a belief that nobody would ever understand me or see me for who I was. Deep down inside, I knew I wasn’t those things. But you kept showing me repeatedly that you disagreed. So I have had to spend years finding the truth. I have wasted years on these lies. And honestly, I am furious. What were those lies?
I was the other woman. Yes mother. You were sick enough to make an 8-year-old into your competition. I get that you were horribly sexually abused, and you were operating from your parts who were also 8 years old. But it was your responsibility to straighten that shit out. You were not supposed to turn me into the other woman who was ruining a full-grown woman’s relationship with a full-grown man. There was nothing about this situation I wanted. I wanted parents. I did not want a love triangle. I did not want to compete over a sexual relationship I never consented to. And I certainly did not want this mindset. I don’t want to live a life where I always believe I am only good enough for a side-chick role. No thanks. I want to value myself more than that. You can have the pedophiles. I don’t want them.
I was a financial contributor. I am a financial contributor now. I am an adult and I am supposed to be one. Actually, I am the only one because my unconscious crappy thoughts (from you) won’t let me attract a reasonable partner yet. But as a child, I was never meant to pay your fucking bills. I wasn’t supposed to be “working” at 10 years old. I was not supposed to be sold to make ends meet. I know my dad did a good job of ruining your life and your financial situation. You married an asshole so that’s on you. But you also seemed to have plenty of space on the credit cards for all those clothes for your dates. It was not my job to make you financially solvent. You pimped me out to “make ends meet” and told me it was my job. And you filled my head with beliefs about the evil side of money and working for a living. But I won’t let that nonsense stop me from financial success now. And my kids won’t know what it’s like to be sold.
I was in the way of your social life. There is nobody who knows more about what it is like to have a social life stopped by their children. I have been a single mother for 11 years and it is hard to get out into the world. You were a single mother for a short time because you were desperate to find that next loser. And boy did you find some losers. But it was the ultimate cruelty to treat me like I was in the way of your life and a symbol of your failed marriage. Selling me served two purposes, didn’t it? You made money and I was out of the picture. I was gone. You were putting me in harm’s way to get back at my pedophile of a father! You are so sick. You taught me that I was nothing more than a pawn in your life. You filled my mind with unworthiness because the only person who is supposed to love me would rather send me away to horrific situations. I have had to admit to myself that you would have been okay with my death. That’s a horrible thing to have to admit. But I refuse to let that mean I was unworthy. You are a horrible person. I am not.
I was the guarantor in your relationships. Things sure did backfire on you, didn’t they? You treated me like a piece of meat and all of a sudden, there was a man in the picture. He looked great on paper. He made good money. He was a military man and they always look good to the rest of the world. He was willing to pay off all your debt. What an incredible business deal you had found! A savior at last! And I was a part of the package. You needed my cooperation because let’s face it, he wasn’t really that into you. He was into me. And I was pissed because you basically tried to kill me off. But you hadn’t told him that, had you? You pretended to be the perfect little mother. And you needed me to play along. You needed me to make him happy. He would have never stayed for you. You knew it. And you hated me for it. But you also couldn’t hate me because you needed him. What a conundrum you were in! You lost your power. You were now reliant on me, a furious pre-teen who wanted to kill you. You sure know how to make a mess of things. But that’s what you do. You make a mess of everything. You always have. I cooperated long enough for you to hook the pedophile into marriage. He threatened me with homelessness up until that point. But I got older and I fought back. Now you are both stuck with each other and I am OUT! I hope you are as miserable as I know you are. You are sneaking behind his back spending all his money and he is sitting around watching child porn. You hate each other and I know it. But you must hate him less than me since you chose him when I told the truth. And I am fine with that. I am building a real life with no pedophiles in it: a life you never had.
I was never meant to be a convenience for you. I was not meant to be a pawn in your game. I was not meant to be a way for you to gain financial security. I was a child. But you were not a mother. You were a pimp. You were a torturer. You were a massive obstacle for a child who had big plans for her life. You brainwashed me for a while. But I said NO! I will not be taught that I am unworthy of a good life. You do NOT win! You don’t get the upper hand in this life. You chose wrong. And now, you have to live with that. I made different choices. I get to have kids that love me. I get to have kids that give me hugs even when they are 13 (it really does happen). I get to have a peaceful house where nobody is beaten or threatened or raped or screamed at. I will get a real partnership with a real man. These are the dreams I had when I would dissociate into my fantasy land (although there were also unicorns). And I get to have that (maybe not the unicorns). You didn’t stop that. And you never will.
Beth
Bye Mother
Dear Mother,
Another American Mother’s Day is approaching and I am still unraveling the web of contracts you spent my entire life trying to weave. I can’t even imagine how much energy and time you spent attempting to limit my life. Seriously, people have used that same energy and time to create amazing things in the world. People have worked that hard to break records, win Olympic gold medals or become nominated for Nobel peace prizes. But you can say you have used your skills to manipulate others on a grand scale. Congratulations on your momentous feat! You have wasted your life trying to keep others small. You have wasted your life swimming in your own fear and attempting to make everyone else do it too. What a HUGE waste of a life!
But I have some very important information for you here. You aren’t going to succeed in my case. It might be taking me years of hard work to undo the unconscious traps you set up in my system. But I am going to do it. I am going to release all these contracts and live the life I was supposed to live. It will be a bigger life than yours. It won’t be mired in darkness anymore. There will be beauty and love and compassion. I will have all the things you tried to steal from me with your brainwashing and programming. I won’t let my inner parts stay in this way of thinking. You don’t get to tell me how to live anymore. You don’t get to be in charge of my life now. My life belongs to me.
With each step I take into my unconscious, I discover another layer of your evil. I started this journey believing you were somewhat innocent. I had myself convinced you didn’t know what was happening to me. I wanted to believe that was true. As time went on, I realized I had to give up that story. I knew you knew. There were memories of you facilitating my abuse. And then, I discovered how you had trafficked me. But I still made excuses for you. I convinced myself you were a victim who was scared of these men and needing money to survive. I still somehow made you a victim. You weren’t in my life anymore, but I still wanted to give you space to be that victim. But this past month, I have been uncovering another layer of your hateful practices. And I am realizing you spent my childhood trying to set me up for an awful life, a life just like yours. While I may have already remembered some of these things, I now see it was all a plan from the start. So now I am calling you out and writing you off on a deeper level. While I didn’t think it was possible, the ties are severed even more. What have I discovered?
You tried to tell me that I would never be able to have a home of my own. Every time I did a household chore, you were there to tell me I did it wrong. You insulted my efforts and told me I would never succeed at anything in adulthood. You gave me impossible tasks so you could tell me I was a failure at anything I did. If I did them right, you would find a way to sabotage it. You teased me for being bad at things you never taught me to do. You said I could not cook or clean or take care of kids. Of course not. I was 10. And nobody taught me any of these things. But now it was stuck in my unconscious. Now I was filled with hopelessness that I would never be able to have my own household.
You sabotaged my friendships and intimate relationships so that I would know I had no other choice but to stay with you. You involved yourself in all my relationships and drove a wedge between me and every person I thought I could become close to. You ended relationships by suggesting I was a whore. My own mother called me a whore. I guess that made sense since you were selling me. But seriously. Do you realize how horrible that makes you look? They probably left my life more because they didn’t want to get involved in my ridiculous family. In some cases, you convinced some of my “friends” to spy on me and give you information. There were even some situations where you paid people to do this for you. That is seriously sick. And you created a hopelessness in me saying there was no point in relating to others anymore. Honestly, I started to believe it was safer for others if I stayed away from them.
And you were desperate to convince me I would never have or raise kids. You used to tease me about my body and the problems I had with it (all due to my horrific sexual abuse of course). You told me it would never work right. You let me know I would never be a real woman. And you signed me up for impossible child care jobs at young ages so you could show me how bad I was at it. Not surprisingly, I needed some fertility assistance to get pregnant which felt like a stab in the heart. When my twins were born small, you let me know that was all my fault too. I was desperate for them to grow and you knew it. How did you help? You started watering down their formula when I was sleeping (until I caught you). You are a disgusting human being who endangered the health of your grandchildren to further “prove your point” and control your daughter. I was left with the futility of not having the capacity to bring children into this world. And I have had to fight through it every day to be a good mother.
So I’ll see you never. I am done living a life where I am constantly trying to get past your contracts. I am removing myself from your control and your limits. I am going to live the life I want to live. I am going to have beautiful relationships. I am going to raise my kids and their most basic needs. They will feel safe. I am going to have a beautiful household with plenty of imperfections but nobody yelling at me about them. And you are going to sit and stew in your darkness. And that’s okay with me. See you never.
Beth
Escaping the Trap of the Toxic Mother
As you already know, this is a weird time. In some ways, this pandemic has paralyzed me. It has been difficult to get my normal tasks done. And it has been borderline impossible to get new things done. Unfortunately, it has coincided with the need to get some new things done. These new things have directly resulted from the other side of the Coronavirus struggle. That other side has been a deep, somewhat involuntary dive into my relationship with my mother. It makes some sense. The Coronavirus pandemic is a call to grieve on a global scale. And grieving is a letting go, a call to change. If we don’t fight it too much, this is a time for intense and powerful internal change, making external change inevitable, whether we have the energy or not.
So I am letting go of my mother on a deeper level. And I am letting go of the mother energy still surrounding me. Unfortunately, that has meant letting go of some people who were carrying that mother energy. That means finding new ways to do things I have been doing for years. And that also means fighting the deep sense within me that I cannot do things in a new way because I must continue my allegiance to my mother. But this is an allegiance I am deeply opposed to. I have been battling this allegiance for many years. I haven’t spoken to her in 10 years. I have worked hard to process contract after contract I have held with her. And now, there is another one. This one is not surprising. The fact that it is still here is probably the most surprising. But it does highlight the insidious and evil approach she took to controlling me. While this is my personal story, I also know that it is not.
This is much more than a personal story. It is the story of so many others. And it doesn’t help that we are constantly fighting (internally and externally) against a “mother story”. This story tells us that mothers are saints. They give so much. They are naturally nurturing and loving. They would do anything to protect us. We see these examples all over the movies, television, social media and Mother’s Day cards. Even our own mothers used this story to confuse us and leave us questioning our truth about what was really happening. But no mother lives up to the mother story, not even the good mothers. The mothers who are trying to live up to it are another story for another blog about societal victimization of women. But for today, let’s talk about the mothers who never intended to live up to it. Let’s discuss the mothers who use this story as a mask to hide their real intentions or a tool to gaslight their own children. Mothers can be just as nasty, controlling, manipulative and oppressive as any father can. Here are some examples of how toxic mothers control their children as exemplified by my own further discoveries this past month.
They compete with you. This starts at an incredibly young age. And that makes it impossible for you to win that competition. As a child, you will never be more talented, smart, financially savvy or manipulative than a grown adult. So you will learn early that you have no chance in life. You will never be able to truly succeed. You will never win. You will always be second-best. You learn you are unworthy of this life because you cannot figure out how to play the game better than the adults who were supposed to teach it to you. So you walk into adulthood carrying the heaviness of years of hopelessness.
They hold you to contracts. The concept of contracts might not make sense to you at first. Basically, they are deals. And you can probably guess they aren’t fair deals. They are often one-sided deals. Or if there is another side, it is often reneged or a total lie in the first place. And these contracts are lifelong. They might involve your future partners or children. They are meant to stop you from getting more out of life or having more success than your mother. Sometimes they are incredibly specific. They may tell you how much you are allowed to weigh or earn as a salary. And sometimes they are nebulous in ways that make it hard to know if you are keeping it. They may tell you that you have to play a specific role in relationships. There can even be contracts that contradict each other. In the end, you are likely to enter adulthood with a huge pile of rules you must follow, all of which will hold you back.
They sabotage you. Even with all the cards stacked against you, you will have moments of success. You will have times when you get close to happiness or feeling fulfilled. But those toxic mothers are watching closely. They can spot confidence a mile away. And they will come running. They will drive wedges in your relationships. They will convince you of your unworthiness when you start to feel good at something. They will remind you of your contracts over and over and over again. They will find ways to put you back in your place. And their methods are brutal. You would not consider doing these things to your worst enemies. They will break you with sabotage and convince you to give up. And you will grow up with no hope for the happiness you once thought was possible.
There is only one way out of this trap set by a toxic mother. We have to fight hard against the web of hopelessness they have created in us. We need to find these contracts. We need to feel this hopelessness. We need to help our inner parts see that their beliefs came from a toxic person and they don’t represent what our lives can be. We don’t owe our toxic mothers one little thing. We owe it to ourselves to live an amazing life. We owe it to future generations to stop this toxicity now. No matter what we may have heard from our toxic mothers, we can change our future.
Come join us in Survivor’s Guide in May as we get to know the karma kid, the primary inner part holding contracts with abusers. The more you know, the more you can release the hold of the past.
You Are Allowed
In case you hadn’t noticed, everyone has an opinion about what we should be doing during this quarantine. When we learn to please others at a young age, this barrage of opinions can be especially confusing. We need to know the right answer and we struggle to trust ourselves to have it. But the mixed messages from the rest of the world are not helping at all. This week, I want to give you permission to be and do what feels right for you. Accepting our current response is one of the most important things we can do as we live through this challenging time. Here’s a list to help you see what I mean. You are allowed to:
Stare out the window or at the wall for an undisclosed period of time
Spend five minutes deeply wanting connection
Spend the next five minutes loving this time alone
Internally judge others for their reactions because you are stressed and human
Be frustrated about this situation
Have no desire or energy for normal chores that are usually not a problem
Struggle with normal hygienic practices
Run all over the house doing everything you can find to do until you are exhausted
Feel intense fear about the future
Believe this whole thing has something to do with you
Be grateful that you are not quarantined with a particular person
Not feel bad about being isolated while others are miserable about it
Use the quarantine as a reason to say away from abusers
Eat everything
Not feel hungry at all
Wish you were someone else who has it better
Drink a little more than usual to numb those feelings
Lose your creativity and be unable to accomplish your normal projects
Feel unsafe and paranoid about what might happen next
Be angry at leaders who aren’t doing enough
Be furious at the virus
Be pissed about your cancelled plans
Need space from the only people you can be around
Pine for new connection
Not learn a new skill
Learn lots of new things and want to talk about them with others
Watch soooooooo much television programming
Obsess about being the characters of the shows because they are not in quarantine
Scroll through social media feeds more than usual
Lose track of time
Not want to spend time outside
Spend lots of time outside
Ask for help
Offer help
Not offer help
Play tons of video games
Not play video games if you hate them
Cook all the food all day long
Order out for every meal
Be completely DONE with your neighbors
Feel numb
Feel every single emotion a human could possibly feel
Dive into on-line shopping
Save every penny you can
Sleep weird sleep schedules
Struggle to sleep
Take in as much information as possible
Avoid information as much as possible
It is all okay. You can cope how you need to cope. And your way of coping can change on a daily basis depending on how you are feeling. Try to give yourself space to be the imperfect human we all are. And know that this is a traumatic experience which doesn’t need to be ranked or compared to other traumatic experiences. You have permission to be and do what you feel is right. There is no right answer here.
An Inner Conversation about the Coronavirus
As the quarantined weeks add up, our inner worlds can get a bit intense. It isn’t that the content changes much, but it gets louder and louder every day. And while we might try to ignore it, the best thing we can do now is to hear ourselves out. We have a lot more to say than we think. So today, I am giving you an example of what it sounds like in my head as I navigate this new world. I am doing this partly because I know it helps people to see this. I am also doing this because it is about all I can muster today. Here’s what my parts have to say.
Controller
I have to get on top of this thing. It is too uncontrollable and I need to be prepared for anything to happen. I must stay ahead of it as best I can. I don’t want to be caught without the knowledge and supplies I need to get through. I have to find the toilet paper and the pet supplies. I need to spend all my free time searching through the news to make sure I know what is going on. If this thing gets worse, I need to know it’s coming. I need to know before others know. I must always be ahead of the game.
On another note, I need to be working harder. I am wasting too much time. I should be using every spare moment to get more work done. This is an opportunity to create more workshops and products. I should be working harder than ever before. This is no time for downtime. I need to stop watching that stupid show and get more done. Everyone will want to know what I did during the quarantine and I need to have something to show for it. And I need to post about it on social media so people know I am not just sitting around. There’s no real trauma here. It is a time to shine.
Freedom Fighter
I will NOT do what they say. They can’t tell me what to do. They can’t hold me in this God-forsaken place all day long. I am tired of this neighborhood. I have to get away. I have to escape. I have to travel the world and meet people. I cannot sit here day after day after day serving my children and working and watching TV. And God help me if I have to make one more damn meal. This is misery. This is not life. I might as well die instead of living such a completely ridiculous life. I am imprisoned and controlled by this virus, by the world and by my own system. I am tired of living this way. I won’t answer to anyone.
Mean Kid
This entire world is a fucking lost cause! What a bunch of bullshit! What a bunch of idiots! I can’t even deal with this horrible, God-forsaken planet! I will not be a part of this ridiculous circus! What a joke! I am so done with all of it!
Love Seeker
I can’t do this on my own! I need someone to help me. I don’t have what it takes. I can’t make it without help. Someone has to help me. I will never be able to get through this without help. I can’t be alone all the time. It is moments like these that the abandoned ones are unable to survive. Chaos puts us in danger, don’t you understand? We have to find someone. We have to find anyone who can help us now and keep us safe in this dangerous place at this dangerous time. I need my savior.
Isolator
This is perfect! This is exactly what we need! Don’t you think this is perfect?
The Grief of the Coronavirus
The Coronavirus is a catalyst for change. That might be an obvious statement to you. I am sure some components of your life have been turned upside down by this virus. But through my recovery, I have learned how emotions and illnesses are deeply tied together. The lungs are known to represent grief and when we allow grief to express, it changes and rearranges us in so many ways. This global pandemic is here to create global change by encouraging us to acknowledge our losses. This illness could become a healer, but we will have to let it. The losses it is causing are certainly about right now, but they are also deeply linked to our past, even generations before us. Here are some examples of what I am taking about.
Loss of our normal. There is no doubt we are all experiencing changes in our normal routines right now. Those comfortable things we had taken for granted might not be available. And we may be experiencing chaos where we once were sure of predictability. But this is also a reminder. It is a reminder of the normal we always wanted in childhood. It is a reminder of the chaos and unpredictability of a traumatic childhood. It brings us back to a childhood without a normal routine which is one of the most critical needs for a developing child. It is a loss and we need to grieve it.
Loss of safety. Things feel less safe these days. We are under attack from an invisible aggressor and this aggressor is relentless. We aren’t as safe as we were. Part of that prior feeling of safety might have been perception. Part of it might have been reality. But we feel less of it. And it is a reminder of how unsafe we felt in childhood. It is a reminder of our need to stay hypervigilant and watch our environment for signs of trouble. It is a reminder of how exhausting that was. It reminds us of an unsafe childhood. Our lack of safety needs to be grieved.
Loss of connection. Depending on your current lockdown level, you might be experiencing far less connection with others. Most of us are feeling more isolated than before. Although to be fair, some of us were already pretty good at isolating. Whether it is chosen or not, isolation is a reminder. It is a reminder of how it felt to live a lonely childhood without anyone to unconditionally love and support us. As children, we didn’t have the help and support we needed. And forced isolation can bring this back to the surface. Loss of connection needs to be grieved.
Loss of your distractions. The options for distracting ourselves from our pain have been dramatically reduced. Many of the ways we ran ourselves into the ground are off the table. This could be a good thing. The distractions don’t help us heal. But our defenders are freaking out. As children, we counted on our distractions to get us through our awful experiences and avoid utter despair. And when we could not use them, it felt like we were being victimized all over again. This can be a reminder of our powerlessness to maintain our distractions. So even our loss of distractions must be grieved.
Loss of freedom. Human beings are born free. We are meant to be free. We are meant to feel how we feel, express our true authentic selves, and chose the life we want. But we have come up against obstacles stopping that freedom. The more trauma we experienced, the more our freedom was taken. A loss of freedom to go where we want can be a reminder of the loss of all our freedoms. As children with complex trauma, those losses can be immense. A lack of freedom might be such an innate part of our lives that we don’t notice how bad it is and how we are still responding to the old programming from childhood. But we need to become aware so we can grieve this loss.
If you find yourself fighting grief through distractions or blocking grief with anger and hopelessness, you may be experiencing the reminders of your losses. If you find that you are bursting into tears a bit (or a lot) more often than normal, you may be reminded of needs which were never met in childhood. If you find yourself exhausted trying to parse out the difference between the past and today, your childhood losses might be triggered. Allow yourself to sit with your grief. The Coronavirus is here to tell us we need to feel what we haven’t allowed. We don’t have to like it. But humanity could learn a thing or two from it.
Come join us in Survivor’s Guide this month as we discuss healing trauma through difficult times.
Living through Crisis in Survival Mode
In this world in crisis, our trauma responses are running rampant. The approaches we use are as diverse as the human race. We all have our survival strategies and coping mechanism that came from our specific environments. While the methods might be different, there are some similarities in the way we process the present moment after trauma. And I can guarantee that the world has far more trauma than we think. So let’s take a look at what many of us are doing right now to survive this crisis at the expense of any peace we have managed to muster through our adult years.
We are numb. I get this is not new for most trauma survivors. We often spend time in this numb state and a crisis is not needed to put us there. But right now, we might be struggling to feel anything at all. To some, this might feel like progress. If you were used to feeling suicidal or angry all the time, numb could feel like a welcomed change. But believe it or not, feeling our emotions is a step up from numb. I know. I know. I can hear the collective resistance to that statement. Hear me out though. When we are numb, we are invalidating our inner parts who want to share how they feel. We are shutting them down. In the long run, that’s not healthy. But this may be our reality right now.
We are distracted. Distractions are harder to find in isolation, but not impossible. Our defenses can be highly creative. With a vast virtual world and a virus to make the mind spin, we can find so many distractions from how we are feeling. I know that my tendency to peruse social media has jumped through the roof. And I am definitely spending more time in front of the TV watching movies. I am also finding it easier to get caught up in the hysteria about the virus, reading far too many articles than I know I should. The tendency to be distracted right now is very high.
We aren’t sleeping well. Many people are living a different schedule than they were before the crisis. But even if they aren’t, sleep patterns might be shifting and changing. When we sleep, we connect with our unconscious. Our unconscious mind expresses fears in the form of dreams and nightmares. Our triggers show up in our sleep if they are being blocked when we are awake. So we might find ourselves struggling to rest at night even if we are feeling fine during the day.
The mind is telling stories. The mind is made to tell stories. Even in the least traumatized people, the mind is prone to stories that stretch the truth. We created stories to make it through a childhood with a truth that was too devastating to face. And those stories have a tendency to stand the test of time. They become critical to survival. But there is another way we use stories. We use them to explain our past emotions. We create stories for why we feel the way we feel. Our emotions are flashbacks, but we can’t face that truth. So we tell ourselves our emotions are about right now. In this current reality, this is very easy to do. We can relate all our traumatic emotions to this crisis. It has never been easier. And this keeps us in a loop of story-telling that is hard to break.
So please go easy on yourself right now. Show yourself some compassion for your defenses. We are experiencing them on a global level right now. Observe your defenses. Ground as often as you can remember. And allow yourself some space to be less productive, more exhausted and less mindful than normal. There isn’t anything wrong with you. You are reacting to a traumatic experience with a traumatic response you used to survive a traumatic childhood. Despite what you might be reading from others, you are having a normal response. And becoming aware of that normal response is as much a part of our recovery journey as any other step.
Come join us this month in Survivor’s Guide for Life as we explore healing trauma through difficult times.
The Futility of the Uncontrollable Life
Over the past two weeks, my productivity has been down. It’s not surprising if you look at what is happening around me right now. My kids are home and I’m supposed to be homeschooling them while I do my job. I am also supposed to be keeping my family virus-free while still figuring out how to get supplies and cook many more meals than I used to. I really am a shameless non-cooking mother. Take-out and dine-in are two of my favorite phrases. And I guess I am supposed to be cleaning more. And I guess I am supposed to be doing more physical activity with my kids since their activities have been cancelled. And I guess I am supposed to get them to wear clothes and brush their teeth and take baths. Sometimes I am doing those things. But I feel so much less productive with my work. Stuff just isn’t getting done. Not surprisingly, my controller is furious and agitated.
But that’s not the only reason my controller is stirred up. Their illusion of control is failing, and they can’t figure out how to put it back together. There is nothing like a catastrophe to highlight the illusion of control. Most of the time, we live in a world that is filled with a fake sense of control. Our controllers keep us calm through their denial that anything can go wrong at any time. And our controllers lose their minds when unexpected things do go wrong. These things have the potential to poke holes in the lie. But when there is a bigger crisis, the illusion of control begins to crumble. And that is overwhelming. It is intense for everyone, but for those with complex trauma, it is retraumatizing. The unpredictable nature of reality brings our trauma front and center. We survived by believing we were in control. And we cannot face the truth without facing our trauma and seeing it for what it really was: uncontrollable.
There’s a reason we have avoided the awareness of just how uncontrollable this life is. When we are stuck in a traumatic childhood, it can bring up despair and hopelessness. It can be life-threatening when we see no way out. So we shove all those horrible feelings under a sense of false control. But each time a new hole is poked in that veil, those emotions show up. And they feel horrible. They terrify the controller who knows they can leave us paralyzed on the couch with no hope of functioning. They can stop us in our tracks. They can inundate us with stories of how hopeless this life is. And unfortunately, they can bring suicidal ideation. Our controllers are so scared of this, they would rather believe in a complete falsehood. They would rather have us running all over town, doing potentially dangerous things to avoid this truth.
But it doesn’t work. The uncontrollable brings futility, despair and hopelessness. It is a flashback. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t currently in a life we can’t control. There are aspects of our experiences we cannot do anything about today. But when we see our only path forward as death, we are back in childhood. When we believe there is absolutely no way out of this, we are back in childhood. When we believe we have no control over ANYTHING, we are back in childhood. When we believe we will be abused like in the past, we are back in childhood. When we believe a lack of control will only bring horrific things, we are back in childhood.
It is important for us to recognize these feelings as a flashback. When we do, we can see that our inner parts are trying to share their triggered emotions about the past. When we can hold space for them without telling ourselves a story about today, we can help them heal and come back to the real story. What’s that story? A pandemic is not something we can control by ourselves. But everyone is in this together and there are things we can do together to help. And for most of us with trauma, we are in less danger in a pandemic than in our childhood homes. That’s sad, but true. So let your inner parts share their futility. Keep poking holes in the illusion of control. And know that together (while physically distanced), we can take reasonable actions to make it through this.
*Note: If you are in physical danger because you are quarantined with an abuser, please know that many DV shelters are staying open. Please call the hotline and get help.
I’m Done
With this global crisis of epic proportions, it is not surprising how much my freedom fighters are triggered right now. My controller keeps trying to take over and spin my mind on every possible problem that could come from this crisis. Not helpful. They are keeping me from my memories at a time when I most need to connect with myself. And the massive display of controller and karma kid behaviors on a societal level is adding to my inner war in what seems to be leading to a perfect storm. So today, I am writing about how I am done. I am done with so many things. And I am hoping this crisis can serve as a wake-up call for how our world lives in a “safety-first” mindset. But we have to see it first.
I am done with panic ruling the world around us. I understand this virus is a threat to survival. But we are not going to survive by focusing on our sole survival as one human being among millions. That isn’t how it’s going to work. If we don’t calm down and stop raiding the toilet paper, we are going to put more people in harm’s way. Panic buying and hoarding is coming from a place of scarcity. There is no faith in this approach to life. And while I know we learned this from very real abuse as children, this approach does not serve us in situations like this. We have to help each other. Our fear is real. But these responses to fear are damaging. And I’m done with this.
I am done with denial. Denial about this crisis is NOT an enlightened view of the situation. It is simply the flip side of the same coin. It is still a safety response learned in childhood. Denying there is a problem is meant to deny the pain inside about the problem. Denying reality is often used against children in an abusive household, but it doesn’t change reality. And talking down to people who are expressing real fear just makes you a part of the problem. It is invalidating and abusive. And I’m done with this.
I am done with hierarchies. I am sick and tired of the hierarchies. Why does an excessive amount of money make someone’s life more valuable? Honestly, it just makes them a hoarder, a hoarder of money. That comes from trauma. They are in survival mode and they hoard money to cover their tremendous fear. Why are they more important? Why are they more deserving of testing? Why are they more deserving of sick leave? They’re not. They never have been. And I’m done with this.
I am done with lies. Everyone is invested in their story. I get it. If they can get everyone to agree with their version of the story, it makes their story right. Or so they think. That’s actually not the case. But everyone wants to try it anyway. The lies aren’t helping anyone. My social media feed is inundated with misinformation and far too much of it is purposefully misleading. Stop it! We must stop sharing this crap! There is no benefit to a bunch of people agreeing with you about something that is wrong. It could even kill people. I am so done with this.
I am not trying to suggest there aren’t amazingly helpful people out there right now. I am not missing the beauty of people doing things for others. People are stepping up in powerful ways. My perspective might be a bit skewed today, but I can see it. It is there. Mr. Rogers said to look for it and we need to look for it. But we also have to get real about fear responses. This crisis is telling us humanity must shift. People need to look at the world through some new lenses. This requires us to look deep inside and see where our behaviors start. What do those fears have to say? Listen to them and make a grounded decision about how to move forward. This is an opportunity to heal on a massive scale. And healing often comes from painful experiences. This is one of those moments. Use it to the fullest. Tell your inner defenders to take a break from their fear frenzy and sit with self in a new way. This is when we learn folks. This is our moment to transform.
